What's in a (middle) name?

Tuesday

Apr 2, 2013 at 9:10 AMApr 2, 2013 at 9:11 AM

I read something a while back that got me thinking.

It was an article in some parenting periodical, and the gist was that when parents name their children the middle name they choose is often more sentimentally meaningful than the child's first name. The article pointed out that most of the time a child's first name is one the parents like for no reason other than they like it, but more often than not the middle name is in honor of someone the parents love.

I always loved my middle name, and I was mad at my mother for not making it my first name. I was going to be a writer and write great novels and poems, and Danielle was just so much more exotic than Jamie, which I always considered more of a cheerleader's name than one of a great artist. I also think a lot about the fact that I'm going to be 90 someday and my name will still be Jamie … it's weird. It doesn't really work.

I always said that if I had a daughter I would name her Danielle … not after myself, but because I loved the name so much. So that's what I did.

Dani has two middle names … Ruth for my grandmother and sister, and Ann because it's my mother's middle name.

My son is a little different. I named him William for my dad, who passed away 10 months before my son was born. We didn't really choose our son's middle name; it was chosen for us. My husband has two longtime friends … one from childhood and one from college. When we found out we were having a boy my husband told his friends they had to decide between them which one would be our son's godfather and which one our boy would be middle named after.

So Travis became Will's godfather and Will's middle name became Paul.

My sister's children both have two middle names. My niece's middle names are Sharon (my mother's first name) and Irene (my maternal grandmother's middle name and my maternal great-grandmother's first name). My nephew's middle names are James (after me) and William (after my dad).

I hadn't thought much about it before I read that article, but I really love that my sister's and my middle names and the middle names of all our children are so connected to our family tree. It really does make me feel like we've done something to keep the memory of our ancestors alive; that we've done our part to make sure the coming generations will know a little bit more about our family tree.

I still wish my first name was Danielle, though.Jamie Barrand is the executive editor of The Daily Reporter, Hillsdale Daily News, Bronson Journal and Jonesville Independent. She can be reached at jbarrand@thedailyreporter.com.